Politics in the New Millennium

From the walls of Facebook to the televised YouTube debates, the 2008 Obama presidential campaign team knew how to use the "new" media for promotion, outreach and change. An effective marriage being referred to as the "new politics."

Media and politics have always gone hand in hand -- from newspapers to radio debates to the first televised presidential great debates of 1960. But it took the campaign of President Obama to utilize the available tools. When social utility site Facebook launched in 2004, there were political video clips on YouTube and clever parodies on funnyordie.com but the breadth of Internet campaigning was still futuristic.

This new media savvy continues on with the new official White House Web site launched precisely at 12 p.m. EST, during the inauguration ceremony. The prior day I saw then President-elect Obama smile on a televised Renew America ad urging us to get online at USAservice.org and make a difference.

It is a sign of the times, as more and more people of all ages consume news and connect with friends online -- the Web is the place to campaign, network, and change the world. No one has done this better than the Obama team. During the campaign there were virtual Obama billboards in popular online video games such as: Guitar Hero III, Madden NFL '09, NBA Live '08, The Incredible Hulk, and NASCAR '09.

Industry officials say that this is the first time a political candidate has taken advantage of a new technology that allows "dynamic in-game advertising." It was yet another way to reach out to an untapped sector, the youth. The Obama online video game ads were clear: "Early Voting has begun. voteforchange.com," with the image of Barack Obama.

From here forward it will not be considered "new," just business as usual. The presidential race was also about attracting more MySpace friends. A social networking site (SNS) that has more members than Mexico has people cannot be ignored. In 2007 Sen. John Edwards held the first Presidential Dialogue with MySpace and MTV, home of Chose or Lose for the past 15 years. MySpace, a unit of Fox Interactive Media, also held their first presidential primary on Jan. 1 and 2, 2008. During inauguration day, CNN pulled comments from a continuous Facebook thread, members invited to participate in this event, as well as MTV with online coverage and comment threads.

The priority of registering younger voters went beyond the campaign trails and SNS. There are many approaches to getting youth engaged in the democratic system. MTV has become more involved in the process. MTV received a $700,000 grant from the James L. Knight Foundation to get a group of mobile youth reporters, Street Team '08, out in the fields to cover the 2008 presidential elections.

California has Carl D. Brown, who says, "My mission is to use these tools (video camera, computers) to highlight compelling stories that go untold by national media outlets."

MTV broadcast the Inaugural Youth Ball, one of the 10 official balls, with online coverage, as well as full-televised coverage. The president and first lady danced at all of the balls, with cameras and cell phones capturing the historic event. This was most apparent as the 18- to 35-year-olds held devices creating a sea of blue illuminating monitors at the Youth Ball.

It's not that the technology was new that made the 2008 election such a historic media event; it is the way the tools of the 21st century are being used. Granted the Rock the Vote campaign started about 20 years ago to try and get people to wake up and get involved. In 1998 MTV even added AARP as a partner to "Rock the Ages." In 1996 the way that politicians and their staff saw using the Internet was more for administration and management uses, with early stages of online activism.

Even in the 2000 presidential elections, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that, "Many political candidates remain offline (not on the Internet) despite purported advantages of the Web." And in 2004 it was more about Web cams, microphones, watchdog organizations like moveon.org, and the popularization of talk show and Saturday Night Live appearances. There is no doubt that the Internet will become as important, or more valuable, than televised campaigning.

That first televised presidential debate in Chicago in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was powerful, and some believe it cost Nixon the election. Nixon was recovering from a knee injury and refused to wear makeup. Kennedy was fit and tanned. Many of the 70,000,000 viewers who sat glued to their bulky TV sets, remember that night. It was magical. It felt like we were all being spoken to, personally.

The next televised debates were in 1976 -- Nixon refused televised debates in 1968 and 1972. Now television means barrages of personal attacks, red herrings, and speculations by the plethora of political pundits. It is up to us to be informed citizens and sift through the morass, while not believing everything we read on the Internet.

And then there's the day after. There were almost 20,000 videos on YouTube on Jan. 21 with the search of "President Obama inauguration" and 415,000 matches on Google. The key is the quotation marks, without them the Google search pulls up more than 26 million entries.

We've come a long way from the first televised inauguration in 1949, ushering in Harry S. Truman; and Bill Clinton was the first president to have his inauguration aired on the Internet.

Check out:

www.whitehouse.gov

www.servicenation.org

www.think.mtv.com

www.usaservice.org

Mary Cruse is the FILMhumboldt film commissioner and founder/director of the WildRivers 101 Film Festival.